


Wash Me Clean

by northwest_southwest_central



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bathing/Washing, Biting, Dimimari Week 2020, F/M, Feral Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:26:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northwest_southwest_central/pseuds/northwest_southwest_central
Summary: After five years of madness and murder, Dimitri has been reduced to little more than an animal. The former Blue Lions don't know how to react when they witness the depths of his depravity. Nobody knows how to handle a beast.Marianne has already seen enough beasts for a lifetime. None of them have broken her yet.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Marianne von Edmund
Comments: 7
Kudos: 80





	Wash Me Clean

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Dimimari Week 2020  
> Day 3 - Beast
> 
> CW: This fic is pretty graphic. People die. Felix is a jerk. If anything bothers you, then please stop reading.

Blood flows freely beneath her clothes, weighing her down as she stumbles through the dark.

She can recall countless fairy tales that warn against people like her, about women who emerge from the forest, half-undressed or injured. Women like her always turn out to be witches or changelings or something worse.

She wonders how long it will take before she becomes a beast.

***

Marianne sleeps in the back of the cathedral, the same building where she devoted so much of her time as a student. She watches Dimitri as he waits for death. She can’t see his eye, but knows it is jumping wildly between things that aren’t truly there, creating more faces out of the rubble to torment him.

She is waiting for something too, although what it is she cannot say.

***

After they repel the Empire’s attack, Felix joins her.

“I just can’t stand the sight of that creature,” he snarls.

Then leave.

“No.” He tightens his grip on his sword. “You know what’s he’s capable of. You saw what he did to that imperial general. If he decides to slaughter his way through the monastery, who’s going to cut him down?”

You, I suppose.

Felix sits back triumphantly, glad to have won the one-sided argument. Marianne allows it. She can tell that his self-satisfaction is more for his own benefit than hers.

***

Two times a day, she goes to the kitchens and comes back with a plate of something edible. Dimitri eats with his bare palms, with grease staining his fingers, oil dribbling down his chin. The cooks get smart and start giving him offal, the unclean innards and burned waste that nobody else will touch. Dimitri doesn’t seem to notice.

Sometimes, he goes for days without eating. He stubbornly remains still until the wavering in his legs takes him to the ground, and even after waking he is unsure of why he fainted. Other times, he eats like he never will again, gnashing his teeth to break cartilage, desperately licking the oil from the empty plate, still licking it after it drips to the floor.

Marianne watches as he claws ravenously at his own face, using his tongue to sample the dirt caked underneath his fingernails. She wonders how much of it is dried blood.

***

“I’m going to sleep,” Felix announces. “Wake me if he does anything.”

He rolls back on the stiff wooden pew and kicks his dirty boots onto the seat without waiting for an answer. His sword is lying within reach on the tiles underneath him.

“Anything” is too vague. She doesn’t wake Felix when Dimitri sneezes. She wants to, but she doesn’t.

***

Felix is the exact opposite of good company. He can’t sit still. He doesn’t even pray. When Marianne tells him to practice his sword swings outside, he ignores her. He gets agitated by everything and frequently condescends, purposefully trying to get a rise out of her, wanting someone to commiserate with his misery.

“Tell me, have you ever drowned a puppy for its own good?” he asks smugly.

She doesn’t dignify that with a response.

***

Days later, Dimitri moves. She stands up and Felix wakes instantly.

“Where’s he going?” he asks her.

To wash himself.

“The bathhouses are the other way.”

He goes to the river.

Felix snorts. “I shouldn’t have expected anything more from an _animal_. Fine. Good! As long as he’s away from the monastery, he can do whatever he wants.”

She steps away, and Felix’s arrogance falters.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to follow him.”

She ignores him. There’s nothing she can say that will make him understand.

***

Dimitri lets the last of his smallclothes fall to the grass and wades into the river. It’s been warming up lately, but they are still in the Pegasus Moon and Marianne shivers just from watching him. She can feel the chill of the river even from where she’s standing, the spray of sharpened air and cold droplets bursting from over the banks. It permeates the air with surprising speed and cuts her to the bone.

Dimitri swipes the worst of the filth from his body, then extracts himself from the river and shakes off the water like a wet dog. He’s back in his clothes before he can freeze to death, and the matted smell trapped in the fabric is enough to undo his cleanliness. The smell of blood coming from his armor will be even worse.

His eye darts back and forth like an old compass needle, and he is looking past her, through her, around her, anywhere but at her. A crowd is judging him constantly. She needs to make herself stand out. She needs to give him something tangible.

She offers him her shoulder.

When his eye finally locks onto her, she can tell his intentions are crystal clear. He wants her to go away.

It takes Dimitri many tries to fasten his armor, fumbling with fingers that must have been numb, too numb to build a fire. Marianne is pleased to hear to hear his teeth chattering on their trek back to the monastery.

***

Occasionally, the professor can coax a few words out of him. Predictably, he speaks of slaughtering Edelgard and razing her empire to the ground. The professor always leaves him there, because she can hardly waste words on a dead man when she has an army to run.

Marianne encounters the professor as she walks to the kitchens, holding a licked-clean empty plate in hand, and she tries to talk to her as well, trying to convince her to sleep in an actual bed instead of consigning herself to the back of a sty. Marianne can’t remember what she says to the professor, but gets a sigh in response, followed by something patronizing.

It’s equal parts sympathetic and maddening and she hates her own doubt, because doubt is not something she can afford right now.

***

After they return from Ailell, a lineup forms outside the bathhouses. Everyone is eager to wash away the ash and grime, to cleanse themselves of harsh reminders. Marianne hopes Dimitri will feel the same way.

He doesn’t. He stands at his usual spot in the cathedral, stinking of soot. The only difference is the Heroes’ Relic he clutches in his hand, an ancient weapon that must have seen countless atrocities, yet still seems too clean for Dimitri. It practically sparkles under a layer of maintenance and polish. It won’t be long before the weapon is as bloodstained as the rest of him.

***

His friends do little to help. She can’t blame them. Ingrid visibly struggles to cope in a world where her knightly values have fallen apart. Sylvain leads every cavalry charge asked of him, and the harder he wins, the harder he celebrates. Felix just gets angry.

“I hate my father,” Felix says bluntly. “He thinks he’s helping, but he’s only enabling this nightmare.”

What would you have him do?

Felix huffs, but he doesn’t have an answer. After a while, he says, “You’re enabling him too.”

So you hate me as well?

“Yes,” says Felix, but his voice catches. “Next time he runs off to die, just let him. He might learn something.”

Dimitri’s friends kill for him on the front lines. Sometimes, she kills people for Dimitri too, when it’s necessary. But mostly she sits in the back and heals him from a distance. With a job as cushy as hers, it feels as though she’s lost the right to complain.

***

The Goddess, omnipotent and benevolent, is everywhere at once. So why did they consider the cathedral more holy a place than any other place? The only reason Marianne can think of is the presence of the archbishop, who chose to pontificate here during her time on the mortal coil.

Things change. The archbishop now lives in a jail cell somewhere in Enbarr.

Marianne once witnessed the professor tear a hole in the sky. Her hair flowed with an unnatural radiance, and the archbishop gleefully explained that she had become the new incarnation of the Progenitor God. Marianne didn’t get the chance to ask what that meant for the faith.

Five years later, she had still never got around to asking. The professor is just so busy all the time.

***

She can’t pray at the front of the cathedral, like how she used to do when she was a student. Dimitri has claimed the area for himself, a personal flat slab of stone for his eating and sleeping and suffering. If his presence isn’t enough to deter others, then the smell certainly is. He’s marked his territory. He lives in his own filth. His excrement is piled in a corner, and Marianne wonders if he’s committing some deep sacrilege, or if he’s no worse than the bandits who looted the monastery, or if it doesn’t matter anymore since the church is defunct anyway.

Word has gone out that the Knights of Seiros have reclaimed Garreg Mach, and the faithful start flocking in from all over Fódlan, eager to support a front unified by their common belief. They take one step into the grand cathedral and they gag.

A stubborn few can tolerate being in the back. They pray alongside Marianne. She wants to apologize to them, but can never figure out what to say.

***

It’s a struggle to keep pace with Dimitri as he cuts through marshes, across mud puddles, down sheer cliffs. The sun is too low in the sky and she can’t see the roots that keep threatening to trip her into the dirt, too busy weaving through the branches that block the shortest path to the river. She makes mental notes on which branches she could break and shear, in the interest of turning this path into something more walkable, and registers the fact that she has normalized these outings, that she is already preparing for more in the future.

Once, back at the monastery, an overeager student had chanced upon a newborn litter of stray puppies. The student’s stench had clung to the litter, marring them forever, worse than any illness. Their mother, repulsed, refused to even lick them.

Marianne can’t remember much from her student days, but that episode always sticks out in her mind as particularly infuriating. It was not her who drowned them, but a jaded old tanner from the stables who measured lives as easily as numbers in a ledger. She can’t remember if Felix was there or not.

Animals reject what they don’t recognize. Maybe clearing the path is a bad idea.

***

Mercedes, once a kindly classmate who prayed alongside Marianne in the cathedral, has graduated into the de facto medical director for the entire army. She oversees the nursing tent when they’re out in the field, and Marianne is content with following her orders. Mercedes is just so mature and dependable, an angelic field commander, and not to mention her work as a physician in which she has personally dragged half the army back from the brink of death.

In a way, Marianne expected this from a class reunion. Everyone around her has achieved so much, but she’s still stuck in the same building she was stuck in five years ago.

Mercedes still joins her in the back one day and asks her for her secret. Apparently, the patience of a saint only goes so far. Dimitri refuses every form of treatment. In his own words, it’s a wasted effort, and Mercedes, bound by triage, is forced to agree.

There’s nothing empowering about being shackled to another. But when Marianne realizes she’s doing something that no one else can, it still feels like she’s accomplishing something.

***

The Great Bridge of Myrddin is their next target. When Duke Fraldarius suggests they contact House Riegan for support, all eyes fall on her. No one else has her connections, her bloodline, her alibi. It’s decided. She would have agreed regardless, but the fact that it’s decided for her rankles a little.

The roundtable conferences have become more frequent in times of war, and the next one is coming up shortly. She spends the rest of the day writing letters and packing her saddlebags, then departs before sunrise the next morning.

She trusts Felix not to kill Dimitri while she’s away, if only because she has no other choice.

***

Duke Goneril has brought his little sister to the roundtable conference. Hilda squeals and hugs her so hard that her feet leave the floor, and tries twirling her about until Marianne, laughing, squirms to free herself. The two talk about shared memories, old friends, favorite snacks, horses, proper wyvern riding attire, accessories, imported Almyran silk, new shops in Derdriu, their courses, marriages for love, marriages for political reasons, food shortages, anything and everything that comes to mind. Hilda is so welcoming that Marianne feels as though she is home, until Claude shows up and reminds her frankly that she is not.

“We could really use you here,” Claude insists. “Margrave Edmund is a terror. I’m so grateful that he’s on our side. Can you imagine what we could get done with two of you?”

I am not him.

Hilda angles her gaze. “Come on, Marianne. Don’t make us beg you. Please?”

“Consider it, at least. It’s safer here,” adds Claude, in a way that makes her hesitate. He must have already read the professor’s coded message, cobbled together a plan, and is trying to involve her before she leaves. But she can’t stay. She is needed elsewhere.

At this point, the best thing to do is to defeat the Empire. If you want safety, then help us do that.

She’s aware of how absurd she sounds, like she really believes the propaganda coming out of her own mouth.

Claude sighs, and Marianne can tell he speaks to her now not as a politician or schemer, but as a friend. “Think, Marianne,” he says. “What happens after the war is over? From what I hear, Dimitri’s...not exactly fit to rule. Can you really picture him sitting on a throne? Listen, we have to think of the future. Fódlan needs another option.”

And I suppose that option is you.

Claude doesn’t deny it.

She leaves him wanting, but still bids him farewell in a friendly manner. She does the same with Hilda and Lysithea, and wonders what happened to Lorenz. Count Gloucester had shown up to the conference alone.

She heads back to Garreg Mach so she can take her rightful place with the King of Delusion and his army of fanatics. She’s disappointed to find that he’s washed himself while she was gone.

***

Watching over Dimitri is as interesting as watching paint dry. She knows this because Felix has told her multiple times. Dimitri does nothing but stand still and stare at the rubble, looking for answers. Periodically, he will sway on his feet and collapse from sleep exhaustion, and when that happens Marianne will take a breath of relief and finally steal away a few hours of sleep for herself.

Felix entertains himself by telling her stories of the war, of how he pushed back Cornelia’s gang of traitors with nothing but a sword and a dream. There is something visceral in his descriptions of how he defended Fraldarius territory with his own two hands, and on how he relishes combat the most when he’s close enough to smell the blood.

He mocks her when she tells him that she has spent the past five years practicing oration in the safety of the Leicester Alliance, conquering nothing but the anxious stuttering of her teenage years. It’s like he thinks that risking his life needlessly is something to be proud of.

***

The next week, she finds out where Lorenz has been. Dimitri pins him down with Areadbhar and slashes and slashes until there is nothing left. His body is unceremoniously dumped into the river, and the Great Bridge of Myrddin is finally theirs.

Dedue has returned. It’s a minor miracle. For a second, something comes over Dimitri. He orders Dedue not to throw his life away again and Marianne files that one away for later, saving it for the day when Dimitri will listen to his own advice.

***

The sun shines bright through the stained-glass windows of the cathedral. A single ray cuts right across Dimitri’s squalor, making it difficult for him to sleep, but his body is too tired to resist. His one eye flutters, but otherwise, there is no movement. He is sprawled out like a corpse, lying where he falls, sunlight pooling in the crooks of his body. The heat causes the area to smell even worse.

She wonders if anyone has ever mistook him for a statue given how little he moves, in accordance with those other statues around the corner. The four saint statues are the only icons that remain, being too heavy to steal. Everything else of value is gone.

After they win, there will undoubtedly be real statues of Dimitri. He will be standing tall and heroic, instead of lying on the ground, wounded, pathetic and thirsting for blood.

***

Dedue is endlessly patient, gentle and persuasive in a way that Marianne wishes she could be. He talks Dimitri out of his armor and puts it through long-overdue maintenance, oiling and polishing everything, and cleaning out the blood that has melted into the seams. Marianne knows nothing about armor. She wouldn’t have even known where to begin.

She fights off feelings of regret as she watches Dedue help his liege, trying to memorize everything she can from his movements. Felix has less of an excuse than she does, but from the way that he’s sulking, she can tell he’s equally jealous.

***

The difference between tracking and hunting is that in hunting, the animal dies.

With his armor refreshed, Dimitri goes to wash himself as well. Marianne sleeps through his departure and sits up from her pew to find the cathedral empty. She runs through a forest diminished by sunset, chasing a trail of heavy footprints and snapped branches, wondering which one of them is tracking the other; which one of them will be hunting the other, if it comes to that.

She bursts from the trees onto the river’s bank, and Dimitri looks at her from the water, emotionless. He rises, and she sees that he is naked.

His working eye is dark and deadened; the other one entombed in its socket, broken. He approaches her unashamed and Marianne pulls her neckline down, baring her shoulder so the carnivore can have his fill. Dimitri’s front is an unkempt mess of scars and hair, and takes her in his cold, cold arms, bringing her flush to his icy chest, and she cools a heated cheek against him. He is like a slab of stone in the winter, and the shock of cold causes her to gasp quietly into the night. He eclipses her by so much that he must hunch down to place his teeth at the base of her neck. His breath, hotter than the rest of him. She could not escape if she wanted to.

Marianne jerks backward from the pain, but Dimitri has her, holding her still, the viselike grip of his fingers steadying him to the point at her nape, and her jaw involuntarily drops open in the wince of a silent scream.

Dimitri shifts positions and she moans, and it escalates into a full-blooded howl as he tears out a section of her flesh.

In the forest, they are beasts. She cries for him and him alone.

***

She used to pray for death.

The Goddess never listened.

***

“I can handle watching him,” Felix says. “You should go back to the monastery. It’s not safe for you to be here. If he kills you, I’ll have to kill him.”

No, you won’t. I’m not worth it.

Felix grits his teeth, because they both know she’s right.

“Believe it or not, I care about my country,” Felix says after a while. “That’s the only reason I haven’t cut him down already. After the professor and Seteth win this war, they can use him as a studhorse. In peacetime, that’s all he’ll be good for.”

Marianne absently scratches the back of her neck.

“So why do you still insist on helping him? You have to face reality. He can’t _be_ helped. He’s been this way for half his life now. There’s no coming back for him, because there’s nothing he can come back _to_.”

Felix...it’s okay to say you just want your friend back.

He shuts up and glares at her for the rest of the day. It doesn’t make her feel any better.

***

How long can the Crest scholar pursue his insane grudge?

He must have followed her from Derdriu, keeping an eye on her adoptive father until she showed her face. One look and she’s reduced to a quivering child again, cowering behind a locked door and praying as her parents fend off the mob outside. That was the first time she can recall the Goddess refusing her.

The professor scares him off, but now she knows. The professor knows the truth about her Crest.

The Goddess does not refuse her this time. Instead, she calls a meeting, and requests the army make a quick trip into Edmund territory.

***

There is a reason Felix can’t get Dimitri back, obvious to everyone but him. Dimitri stands out of reach, past a border no one should ever cross. Even now, no one will cross it to rescue him, not even the professor, and that’s fair. Dimitri wouldn’t ask that of anyone.

Felix can stand guard at the border forever, clutching his sword and living in fear.

Marianne has other plans. This isn’t a setback, it’s an opportunity. If she is to become a beast, she must first overcome any fears of her own.

***

Everyone but her is surprised when Dimitri agrees to her little detour. He is so obsessed with Enbarr that he neglects his own people, he ignores the tyranny gripping his own kingdom, and yet, he willingly comes along as they march toward the east, towards the land where she grew up.

The forest is haunted to a ridiculous degree. It always has been. As soon as they stray from the road, ensorcelled fog suffocates them, and they lose each other in the confusion. Packs of Demonic Beasts are attracted to the smell of their fear and swarm them, tearing at her allies, at each other, at themselves. They rip up trees from the root with their powerful claws, and foul, corrosive poison drips between their lips, searing the skin from their own faces. Phantom soldiers emerge from the fog, the memories of the hunters and druids who met horrific ends in this forest, now eager to fight alongside the wolves that claimed their lives. Their human forms are no less bestial than anything else in this hellish domain.

Marianne calmly fights back with her magic, and as the phantom in front of her dies she realizes that maybe Felix was onto something. It’s not visceral enough. She pulls out her lance and sets to work on tearing the phantom soldiers apart with her own two hands.

Their bodies look human. They can even bleed. Her heart pounds with so much excitement that the scabs in her shoulder reopen, and the smell of her own blood leaves her dizzy with pleasure.

This must be how Dimitri feels _all the time_. She remembers that he always invokes his parents, and another spark of joy leaps within her heart.

Anticipation builds as she carefully examines the face of every phantom soldier she sticks. Perhaps her mother and father will return to her at last, and she will tear them apart too and laugh as their blood drips into the soil.

***

Without meaning to, she glances back, and the Wandering Beast makes a choked, throaty noise. It takes her a second to realize that it is mocking her.

This forest is the den of Demonic Beasts. You will be lucky to make it out alive.

Something dull clicks in Marianne’s mind. A flicker of eyelids, an errant neigh, a lowering of the ears, subtle clues that no one but her could pick up on. She had always thought she was just empathetic. Whatever ability they share, the Wandering Beast has honed it for centuries. It can read her body language like an open book, taunt her with her own thoughts, and call out her fear with startling clarity.

Perhaps her ability to understand the feelings of animals had come from their Crest all along.

Dimitri plunges Areadbhar into the beast’s neck, and Marianne can tell that her ancestor is grateful to die.

***

“Nice sword,” says Felix in admiration.

Thank you.

“Can I hold it?”

No.

***

Dimitri is rabid with ecstasy, which might be an improvement. He laughs to himself, and he breaks into smiles, and he makes promises he can’t keep to people who aren’t there. Edelgard herself will be leading the imperial forces at Gronder Field and there is nothing in the world that can stop him from marching at her in a straight line and cleaving her head from her body with a single stroke.

Marianne thinks, arrogantly, that she could probably stop him if she tries hard enough. No one, not even the professor, suspects what she has been capable of since earning her fangs.

But there’s no point. If anyone stops Dimitri, he’ll just piece himself back together and try again. He will fight this battle on his own terms. If he fails, that will be on his own terms as well.

The question is, how many of her friends will die in the process?

***

His bites start to hurt less. She doesn’t know if he’s being gentle, or if she’s just growing used to the pain.

She chooses to believe the former.

***

Gronder Field is a nightmare come to life. Dimitri is the only one who doesn’t hesitate. The familiar faces of the enemy mean nothing to him, not because he doesn’t recognize his classmates, but because he is already so accustomed to having familiar faces judge his every move. Claude arrives, so cocksure and convinced of his own authority, yet for all his planning he fails to account for Dimitri’s indiscriminate rage or the chaos that Edelgard creates.

Marianne can sense Claude’s plan falling apart in real time. Abruptly, the Leicester Alliance switches their goal to one of simple expediency: crush anyone who isn’t an ally.

“Dimitri is a danger to all of Fódlan!” shouts Ignatz. It almost sounds like the truth. “This can’t be the future you believe in!”

His arrow soars past her head at close range, and she slashes his throat a few seconds later. Marianne watches Ignatz bleed to death on the grass. He wanted to be an artist. She tells herself there is nothing she can do for him, because Dimitri needs her by his side. It almost sounds like the truth, too.

Behind them, a pink-haired warrior leads an ambush and starts mowing down Marianne’s friends. The sickly smile on her face is familiar. Marianne consciously moves in the other direction, hating herself, hating the world, hating the emperor who caused this madness. Watching her two enemies destroy each other, Edelgard must be _laughing_. Marianne’s blood practically ignites with rage at the thought. Suddenly, she can feel Dimitri’s _lust_ , his _hatred_ , his overwhelming _need_ to

_cut_

_that_

_woman_

_to_

_shreds_

so she can _never laugh again_.

Blutgang throbs in her hand, alive, ready to _kill_ , and finally, she understands.

The Crest of the Beast is her birthright. She is power incarnate. They dared to tell her that she was _less_ , when she always knew that she was _more_. A thousand years of them slaughtering her kin, until she finally found the strength to stand up and discover that fear wasn’t the only option. Even in the midst of battle, it takes all of her self-control not to lose herself to the sheer, vein-flooding _pleasure_ of it.

It’s tempting. It’s _so_ tempting. But for the first time in her life, she controls her Crest instead of the other way around, and it’s a feeling she will never give up, no matter how much Dimitri needs her.

She finds him in a direct fight against one of Edelgard’s manufactured monsters. The spectacle of Demonic Beasts should be easy to pick out from the rest of the soldiers, but Marianne’s eyes still pass over them a few times in the fray.

***

Dimitri is back to normal. The scales fall from his eyes, and he announces his intention to turn the army around and retake Fhirdiad.

Dimitri is back to normal. He apologizes for his crazed actions, and everyone says they can find it in their hearts to forgive him, just like that.

Dimitri is back to normal. “Normal” is probably not the right word. Dedue informs Marianne that Dimitri has always been that way.

All that effort, wasted. All she had to do was die.

Claude was right. She should have been thinking of the future.

What happens now?

***

She finds herself back in the cathedral, and it makes sense; this is the place where she’s always gravitated whenever she needs guidance. The absence of odor is oddly hostile to her nose. New pilgrims can hardly tell there was once a feral creature living in the nave, which bothers her for a reason that she can’t put into words.

Felix is still there, even though his quarry has gone back to the monastery to sleep in a real bed. She can tell he’s not praying for his father. The Goddess can’t give him the answers he’s searching for, so Marianne tails him until he inevitably confronts Dimitri, partly because she wants to confirm the answers for herself, but mostly to make sure they don’t kill each other.

“Sometimes,” Felix spits out, “you have an animal’s face, contorted with anger and bloodlust. At other times, a man’s, with a friendly smile. Which is your true face?”

Marianne nearly bursts out laughing. After all this time, Felix still doesn’t understand.

Dimitri answers the loaded question with confidence. His answer is the same one that she would have given, and Marianne’s heart swells with relief.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Dimitri knows that atoning for his sins won’t happen overnight. The first life he needs to save is his own.

Slowly, and with the professor’s guidance, he makes his best effort to readjust. Dedue cooks him meals far too extravagant for wartime and soon, he is back to eating and sleeping regularly, like a normal human being would. The only thing he still needs to do is bathe.

Layers of filth melt off into the hot water, and he scrubs even more from his armpits and groin. His matted hair collapses and he spends a while with his head under the water, everything immersed but his nose, itching at his scalp and running his fingertips through the roots until every strand is fair again. Soap slathers his body and he massages the knots out of his muscles, easing tension until his rough skin can soften under the encompassing warmth. He remains in the water until his fingers prune, dragging his nails repeatedly behind his ears and between his toes, wanting to catch every trace of dirt he can find.

A sigh rolls out as he lifts himself from the water, and an unfamiliar sensation descends upon him as he washes his eyepatch for the first time since putting it on. He’s halfway through trimming his fingernails before he can put words to it.

He never wants to feel dirty again.

When he returns to his room, he finds Marianne sitting atop his bed, shoulders bare.

“Ah.”

“Habit,” she says.

He sits next to her and graces her neck, cautiously exploring the rough mass of scars he has made of her skin.

He’s so afraid of hurting her. He has already taken so much from her in both flesh and spirit, and yet she does not repulse from his touch; she never has, he knows that she never will. He is unclean, a murderous monster who can break her in half, who could have broken her many times, and yet she has never spurned him.

She lets the shawl fall from around her arms, exposing herself completely.

Her figure is slight; his war has left her too thin, he could have counted her ribs if he’d ever seen them in the daytime. Her shoulders and breasts are raw and beautiful, taut with scars, bruised during his childish attempts to scare her away. The bites covering her shoulders have been unmistakably gouged by human teeth. They are uneven and overlapping; they will never fully heal.

He did this to her, to his _salvation_ , even as she nursed his wounds and nourished him with her own body. She had only given, and he had only taken, in a pointless display of virility, driven only by the savage urge to hold her down, to hold her in place and make her entirely _his_.

He weeps into her arms, profoundly ashamed, for even of the most sacred and irreplaceable there is nothing he does not destroy.

“Why did you stay by my side, Marianne?” he sobs.

She strokes his damp hair as he weeps, and he’s so glad that he is finally clean.

“I was once a beast,” Marianne says. “I wandered alone, spreading misery wherever I went. I believed that I was undeserving of happiness. Every day, I prayed...I prayed that the Goddess would take me to her side.” Her hand slackens atop his head, and he realizes that she is crying too. “The professor gave me something to live for. You, Dimitri... _you_ gave me something to live for.”

Dimitri grasps her as gently as she can, his tears staining her breasts, and she does not buckle under his weight.

“You loved a man who wasn’t real,” he chokes between sobs. “I was _never_ worthy of your love. Why did you defile yourself with a bloodstained monster like me?”

“ _Everyone_ is worthy of love. You showed me that, when I was at my lowest.” Marianne’s throat trembles, and she resumes stroking his hair with an unsteady hand. “I’m so sorry, Dimitri. I should have been there for you. We left you for five years...you must have been so scared. Nobody understood what had happened, and everyone was so afraid. So I needed to show you...that I was not afraid.”

“You were foolish,” he whimpers. “I could have killed you.”

“I was prepared for that to happen,” she says, and tears roll from her face, and Dimitri’s skin burns where they fall. “But I still followed you to the river, because I was not afraid. I could always see the humanity within you, and I would have done anything to bring it back, even if it meant risking my own life. And no matter what, you did not kill me.”

“But I hurt you!” he cries, but for all the repentance in the world he is still damned. “I hurt you, and so many others. I _killed_ so many others!”

“You could _never_ hurt me,” she tells him, with her mouth grazing his, and their kiss is something caring and gentle and entirely new. Dimitri nearly recoils, unwilling to risk bruising her with even the softness of his lips, but she leans into him, still not afraid, never afraid, and she takes his fearful body in her arms and shows him what it means to be loved.

Dimitri weeps openly, clinging to her like a lifeline, and Marianne draws him back onto the bed.

“Please...” he begs her. “Marianne, whatever you do, do not give up your precious life. Please, _please_. Even at my most depraved, I could never bear the thought of losing you.”

“I’m here, Dimitri,” she whispers.

Tears flow freely.

They are safe in the arms of the beast.

**Author's Note:**

> Named after the song Wash Me Clean by k. d. lang  
> Written in present tense because I hate myself
> 
> Comments are always appreciated! Let me know what you think!


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